The Mail

Letters from our readers.

Party People

Jill Lepore, in her article on the impact that communications technologies have on political parties, views the party system as one that can foster civic engagement and democratic governance, as opposed to causing an “atomizing of the electorate,” which is often the case in our current media-saturated environment (“The Party Crashers,” February 22nd). It’s true that in the late nineteenth century American political parties acted as antidotes to an élite domination of politics, and helped inspire waves of electoral participation. By the mid-nineteenth century, as many as eighty per cent of the people who were eligible to vote in Presidential elections (white men) were doing so. But it was never clear that this participation—propelled by mass torchlight parades, which were similar to the drunken bacchanals that often follow sporting events—produced the sort of participation that Lepore extols. Political parties have rarely introduced meaningful political change. In the nineteen-sixties, the civil-rights movement and the legislation that resulted from it occurred in spite of the intransigence of political parties. The candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump (controversial as he is) appeal to voters precisely because they arrived from outside the party apparatus.

Richard M. Perloff

Cleveland, Ohio

Lepore’s article is thought-provoking and useful. But I wonder if she goes against her own idea of how political parties and democracy change when she links the rise of smartphones to the degradation of the two-party system (and, possibly, of our entire political system, as a result). She asks, “At some point, does each of us become a party of one?” Surely, observers during times of political transformation have always had similar concerns. So far, at least, our democracy has figured out how to renew itself, hard as that is to believe in the middle of such change.

Jeff Blum

Takoma Park, Md.

Lepore’s piece is an interesting look at the history of political parties. Parties exist for groups of people with similar political views to put forward candidates and determine platforms. Only through such collective action can individuals develop the strength to take on the entrenched interests of the wealthy. Lepore connects the apparent recent decline of political parties to shifts in the media, but isn’t this also a result of the parties—and the mainstream media—becoming vehicles for vested interests? Most campaign resources go into ads, and this makes both the candidates and the media dependent on big money. The Internet has provided alternative means for people and candidates to reach one another directly. As the campaigns of Sanders and Trump show, individual support and the meetings of neighbors can be as important as money.

Ruth Cain

Minneapolis, Minn.

Lepore presents a valuable perspective on the press and political parties. But the largely winner-take-all nature of the Electoral College plays a more decisive role than the media in the two-party system. A political revolution would come from a shift to proportional representation, such as we see in many European countries. If Trump were Dutch, his party would have seats in Parliament.

Emily Alpert

San Francisco, Calif.

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